The organizations developing this document include DPI, WEAC, WASDA, WASBO, AWSA, WASB, MPS, WISDOM - all the W's.

United Voices: Make Children a Priority

Parents, Child Advocates, Educators Unite in Call for Investments in Public Education

The state budget process is about difficult choices – choices that reflect our state’s values and priorities.  We have come together to call on the state Legislature to make children a priority by taking a new, more balanced approach to crafting this state budget.   

We understand that Wisconsin faces fiscal challenges, but our children did not create the budget crisis and we shouldn’t balance the budget on their backs.  How can this budget provide $410 million in new spending to speed up highway projects and $200 million in corporate and other tax breaks while slashing $1.7 billion in resources for schools?  Highway construction can be delayed in a tough economy, but our children are depending on us now.    

Many school districts are finding that Governor Walker’s “tools” are insufficient to “manage” these proposed cuts without laying off staff, cutting programs and increasing class sizes.  Simply put, large gaps remain in local school budgets and our children will pay the price.  In the end, our children will be left with fewer opportunities to succeed.  Our schools have already cut to the bone and fixed costs, like gas and electricity, are increasing.  We’ve turned down the thermostats, shut off the lights and cut costs wherever possible.

The proposed cuts to public education will also increase tension, pitting funding of special and regular education programs against each other.  That is because federal law requires schools to maintain the same level of funding for special education as the previous year, requiring deeper cuts in a regular education programs, extracurricular opportunities, maintenance of school facilities, and indeed, entire school district operations, with resulting reductions in inclusive education opportunities for children with disabilities.

Meaningful shared sacrifice in resolving our fiscal challenges must include taking a more balanced approach to program cuts, directing limited revenues into our areas of greatest need, and considering a range of revenue options.  As lawmakers confront the difficult choices before them, we urge them to remember that just because a choice is tough does not mean that is right, moral or just.

As lawmakers confront the difficult choices before them, we urge them to embrace the values that have made Wisconsin strong.   The state faces fiscal challenges, but we are not without options which could protect education:

1.      Redirect revenue growth from new highway projects to support public education.  We recognize that infrastructure is important to the state’s economy, but we question the decision to increase transportation funding by 250 percent and redirect sales tax revenue to support new highway projects while slashing resources for public education.  Prioritizing highways over our children’s education does not reflect Wisconsin’s values.

2.      Maintain income limits and accountability for the Milwaukee Parental Choice (Private School Voucher) Program.  Now is not the time to expand the program and allow wealthy individuals to use tax dollars to send their children to private schools.  This budget spends an additional $20 million on private school voucher students and demands even less accountability by eliminating the requirement that voucher students take the same standardized tests as public school students.  Meanwhile this budget slashes $834 million in aid to public schools.

3.      Restore local authority of school districts to raise revenue.  Lawmakers should pare back the 5.5 percent reduction in revenue limits and increase the low-revenue ceiling as it costs the state nothing.   Locally elected school boards should have more flexibility in making decisions about investments in education to meet the needs of the community.

4.      Consider a range of revenue options.  These options could include increased efforts to collect taxes already owed to the state, closing tax loopholes and rethinking tax breaks for investors and corporations.

Working together, we can find solutions to the problems confronting our great state.  We must protect the values we share.  Wisconsin has always taken pride in public education and the opportunities it provides to children.  Now more than ever we must maintain our schools so that children today have the skills they need to find good jobs and compete in the global workforce.  Wisconsin can only grow stronger if we invest today in what we know will help build a brighter future.

Hannah Arendt had it pegged as far as I'm concerned.

“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School?

Pads. Interactive Whiteboards. Netbooks. Video games. Although educational technologies are being implemented more and more in classrooms across the country, we don't often stop and ask students - or their parents - what they think their technology needs are. But the newly-released Speak Up 2010 survey has done just that.

What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School?

'Have You No Sense of Decency?' The Wm. Cronon Story - The Atlantic

The Rethuglican Party in Wisconsin is at it again. What ever happened to the true Republicans? Have they fled the state?

'Have You No Sense of Decency?' The Wm. Cronon Story - The Atlantic

Walker thinks the demonstrations will go away, but they are only growing in resolution.

Tune in to this rare opportunity to see the "best living historian of education" (Washington Post) and America's "soberest, most history-minded education expert" (Wall Street Journal), give one of the best-informed analyses of the current state of American education—after the Walker attack in Wisconsin.  Here her talk about the folly of merit pay.  It just doesn't work.  Teachers need autonomy, mastery and purpose - not money.


http://www.uwex.edu/ics/stream/session.cfm?eid=26442&sid=47311

Key Indicators That Lead to Teacher Effectiveness

Published Article: Positive predictors of teacher effectiveness

Publication: The Journal of Positive Psychology
Vol. 4, No. 6, November 2009, 540-547

Authors: Angela Lee Duckworth, Patrick D. Quinn, and Martin E.P. Seligman

Research Focus: Predicting highly effective teachers

Executive Overview: In the world of Race to the Top, with an emphasis on highly effective teachers, it is extremely important to be able to accurately identify teachers who possess the attributes necessary to increase student achievement. This study looks at three significant predictors that help identify teachers who are more effective than others. Many of the traditional indicators of competence explain minimal difference in performance. This study looks at teachers in under-resourced public schools that possess a high degree of effectiveness, measured in terms of academic gains of students. The authors answer the question: How important are positive traits such as life satisfaction, optimistic outlook, and sheer grit in determining a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom?


Key Findings

Teachers who rated higher in life satisfaction (contentment with one's current life situation) were 43% more likely to outperform their peers based on their students' achievement data.
Teachers who scored higher on a grit scale, which measured perseverance and passion in the pursuit of long-term goals, were 31% more likely to outperform their peers.
All three positive traits (life satisfaction, optimistic outlook, and sheer grit) predicted teacher performance.
The researchers concluded that when recruiting and selecting teachers, schools should consider that positive traits such as grit, life satisfaction, and optimism may be as important, if not more so, than traditional indicators of performance.
The findings suggest a place for positive interventions in the professional development of current teachers.